1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and an information processing method for reproducing video data.
2. Description of the Related Art
Monitoring systems, in which a camera installed at a location to be monitored (a monitored space) captures video data and the video data is recorded into a recording device such as a hard disk, are known. With such a monitoring system, a user can reproduce and browse portions of the recorded video data captured at any point in time.
However, it is difficult for the user to select and reproduce a desired portion of the video data when the amount (in other words, the recording time) of recorded video data is large. For example, when monitoring a specific moving object, such as a person, an animal, or the like, it is necessary for the user to search for the period of the video data in which that moving object has been captured (the range of time in which the object is present, or in other words, the times in the video data at which the moving object entered/exited (IN point/OUT point)). When the video data has a long recording time, however, an inordinate amount of labor is required in order to find the IN/OUT points of the specific moving object.
As a solution to this problem, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-218014 provides a monitoring system in which a moving body is recognized within a captured moving image of a monitored space, and the recognized moving body is then displayed in a map that indicates the monitored space. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-218014 also discloses a method in which video that has been stored in the past is reproduced by clicking on the moving body. With regards to this system, a method is disclosed in which a location is specified as a range upon the map, and the stored video of a moving body that has entered that range is searched; moreover, a temporal distribution of the times at which the stored video was captured is displayed.
In addition, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-74822 provides a monitoring system in which labels including identification information are attached to a plurality of monitoring targets so as to identify them, and those monitoring targets are captured by a plurality of capturing apparatuses of monitoring devices. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-74822 also discloses a method in which the monitoring targets are identified within captured images based on their labels, and are then broadcast to pre-assigned terminals. This system makes it possible to determine the general location of a monitoring target, even if there has been a period in which that monitoring target was not captured, by displaying the trajectory of the monitoring target based on the location information of the monitoring target detected using the label.
Furthermore, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. H7-160856 discloses a method in which a trajectory acquisition apparatus detects and stores location information of a moving object upon capturing an image of that moving object, and when the stored video in which the moving object is present is reproduced, the trajectory of the moving object is also reproduced therewith.
Finally, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-158710 discloses a method in which a timeline is displayed, visualizing, by way of a bar graph, whether or not each video object is present at each point in time within stored video, making it possible to efficiently search for and edit video in which a video object is present.
However, the monitoring system of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-218014 is designed for searching for and playing back the stored video of a moving body that has entered a location specified as a range, and does not display the trajectory of a specific moving body within a monitored space. This system is thus problematic in that the capturing history (multiple past capturing periods) of a specific moving body cannot be confirmed in a visually accessible manner, and thus specifying a capturing period from among those multiple capturing periods and playing back video stored in the past is difficult.
Meanwhile, while the monitoring system of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-74822 is designed to identify a monitoring target, detect its location, and broadcast the video captured when that monitoring target was captured, the system does not include a means for checking a list of capturing history of the monitoring target within the video captured during the monitoring. Furthermore, while this system displays the trajectory of a monitoring target based on location information if there has been a period in which that monitoring target was not captured, the trajectory is nothing more than auxiliary information. It is therefore impossible to check a list of capturing history based on information such as the present location and movement path of the monitoring target, specify a desired capturing period from such a list and reproduce the stored video therefrom, and so on with this system.
The trajectory acquisition apparatus of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. H7-160856 does identify a monitoring target and detect its location, but does not take into account the capturing period of the monitoring target within the captured video in any way. For this reason, it is not possible to check or specify the period in which the moving object is present on a trajectory reproduced simultaneously with the video.
Furthermore, although the editing system of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-158710 acquires the times at which each object is present in stored video, which can then be used to search through the video, the editing system does not take into account the location in which the object is present in any way.
As described thus far, conventional monitoring systems cannot display periods in which a specific moving object is present within stored video in a visually accessible manner based on the location of the moving object, the path the moving object has traveled, and so on. The conventional monitoring systems also do not provide GUIs (graphical user interfaces) through which desired capturing periods can be specified with ease. Above all, the conventional monitoring systems do not provide a GUI that a user can use intuitively, which not only displays the capturing period of a specific moving object upon the trajectory of that moving object in a visually accessible manner, but also through which a desired capturing period can be specified from among displayed capturing periods and the stored video reproduced and displayed with ease.